For a while now I have trouble with Anno 2070, out of nowhere it minimizes to desktop while playing on random times and the blue ubisoft ball keeps spinning and I have to kill the process.

I've been looking for a solution on the ubi forums and using google but found nothing, though I heard updating your bios might solve the problem. But I just can't find the new Bios updates on the Nvidia website nor anywhere else, I have a Nforce 780i Motherboard and a Nvidia Geforce 570 videocard.

Feldspar

22-03-2012, 06:49 PM

Okay, your post tells me you don't know that much about hardwear, updating your BIOS is not going to solve your problem.

I think by the way you list your graphics card you might mean updating your graphics drivers, these are easily found on the nVidia website and there's probably an auto-updater, too.

If you really do want to find a BIOS update you will need to visit your motherboard manufacturer's website. nVidia don't manufacture motherboards, Nforce 780i is just their set of chips (in the same way they don't handle the manufacture of the video cards), if you don't know then you can find the manufacturer by their name/logo on your motherboard. However, updating BIOSs has been known to do some odd and dangerous things and should only really by attempted by someone who knows what they are doing and for a very good reason.

If this error is occurring in Anno 2070 and nothing else (and if you are only playing Anno 2070, go try something else for a while), then I would suggest that it could just be caused by a corrupt file, back up your saves, uninstall and then reinstall.

Ravelle

22-03-2012, 07:11 PM

My drivers are up to date and reinstalling the drivers also didn't do any good.

The problem only occurs when playing Anno 2070 but I can't uninstall it and re-install it because thanks to Ubisofts DRM your cd-keys can only be activated so many times, so un-installing means no more Anno.

Odeon

23-03-2012, 10:08 PM

When Anno minimizes, can you get back to it by alt-tabbing? If it's just minimizing and you can get back to it, the problem is probably related to some other software, especially if you play in full-screen mode.

What other games are you able to play? Are they as graphics-intensive as Anno 2070? Do you play them in the same full-screen/window mode as Anno 2070? Do you play them as along as Anno 2070?

Althea

24-03-2012, 09:31 AM

The problem only occurs when playing Anno 2070 but I can't uninstall it and re-install it because thanks to Ubisofts DRM your cd-keys can only be activated so many times, so un-installing means no more Anno.
No, it doesn't. It's been changed to X activations per month, I believe.

Ravelle

24-03-2012, 10:17 AM

No, it doesn't. It's been changed to X activations per month, I believe.

Oh? Didn't know that well in that case I'll have to wait till next month because it won't let me activate it as of now since I re-installed windows.

Memph

24-03-2012, 10:47 AM

updating your BIOS is not going to solve your problem.

This x1000.

Tempting as it may be to try every possible fix for that one game you want to play, it's never worth a 'fix' that's likely to break everything else in the process. If the GPU works in every other game, then the GPU works.

Althea

24-03-2012, 11:03 AM

There's also a patch coming on Monday. Just sayin'.

Ravelle

24-03-2012, 02:17 PM

When Anno minimizes, can you get back to it by alt-tabbing? If it's just minimizing and you can get back to it, the problem is probably related to some other software, especially if you play in full-screen mode.

What other games are you able to play? Are they as graphics-intensive as Anno 2070? Do you play them in the same full-screen/window mode as Anno 2070? Do you play them as along as Anno 2070?

So far it's only Anno, other games like Shogun 2 and other high graphic games work just fine, and no I can't alt-tab back in to the game, I have to kill the process to close the game.

Danny252

24-03-2012, 03:45 PM

I've been looking for a solution on the ubi forums

Why not actually ask on there? A game minimizing is almost certainly nothing to do with hardware, as far as I can see.

Mistabashi

24-03-2012, 09:25 PM

Open-up Event Viewer and check Windows logs > System after it's minimized and see if there's any error events showing up. It could be a video driver crash, usually a little pop-up will appear in the system tray telling you "the display drivers have crashed and have been re-started", but some games don't like having focus taken away from them so they won't resume propely. Of course, a driver crash means either a bug in the game, a bug in the driver, or a hardware issue, so doesn't really narrow things down much.

Odeon

24-03-2012, 10:17 PM

There's been a recent rash of problems with the NVIDIA drivers going corrupt somewhere that requires a complete uninstall of all NVIDIA drivers, then a reboot, then a re-install. Give that a shot and see if there any difference for Anno 2070. A corrupt driver will usually cause problems with all games (and sometimes even watching YouTube videos and the like), but it's possible that Anno is using a feature that your other games are not.

Mistabashi

24-03-2012, 11:09 PM

If you're going to uninstall video drivers you may as well run Driver Sweeper and do it properly (it deletes all the possible files and registry entries related to your drivers). Using this has cured an odd problem for me in the past, so it's worth trying if you can't find a more specific cause.